TEXAS — Some Texans are seeing the light again after January’s winter weather event.

Thousands were left in the dark, but it’s nothing compared to previous winter storms thanks to some new additions to our state energy grid.

Two energy experts have their opinions when it comes to battery energy. One said it was the biggest success story from the January storm, while another said it’s just a Band-Aid to wind and solar power. But both agree — it did make a difference, from the Base Power battery located in a Plano home to the Tesla Megapack battery storage unit in Royse City, northeast of Dallas.

Matthew Boms, executive director at Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance, said January’s winter blast was the first major stress test of battery power storage.

“They stayed ready when the grid was stable and then they stepped up in a big way when demand peaked and conditions were tight. And that happened around 8 a.m. Monday morning,” said Boms.

Boms said Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance represents advanced energy companies like solar, battery, electric vehicles and more.

“A few years ago, Texas barely had any battery storage. Today it’s one of the largest fleets in the country. We’re leading the nation. We’re the number one state in battery storage now,” said Boms.

That’s one of the reasons Boms said statewide power outages were not as widespread this year compared to the 2023 winter storm and the deadly disaster two years before that.

“In 2021, we had basically had essentially no batteries, no megawatts of batteries. In 2023, we had approximately 220, give or take, and 2025, we had such a growth that we’re up to 10,000 megawatts. There’s a huge growth of batteries that just happened in Texas and it’s still growing,” said Nancy White, president of the Legislative Energy Action Foundation.

White is currently working on bills for the next legislative session in 2027, focusing on critical infrastructure like internet, lights and water, with a hyper focus currently on the grid.

“2021 actually led to three failing generators in the ERCOT grid. So right now, to try to keep it from completely crashing, they’re building a lot of batteries, and the batteries help with the transition from the solar and wind operations,” said White.

Regarding January’s winter weather, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told Spectrum News: “It did not have any reliability issues on the statewide electric grid.”

But for experts like White, she said battery storage isn’t a permanent fix.

“And there’s some I think it’s Brazoria County has like 51 planned for theres. There’s a lot of concerns with that moving forward when you look at the components when you look at the impact should it go into runaway and others. There’s a lot of science behind that. But they essentially become these toxic bombs at that point. And there 1200 of these planned in Texas alone,” said White.

According to Clean View, as of January 2026, there are 187 utility scale battery storage projects in Texas. In 2025, Clean View reported 38 battery storage projects were built in Texas alone.